over the course of the project. very significant in terms of the basic service of the muni metro service through the tunnels and that the track had gotten worn to the point where we couldn't run. it was not safe for us to run the trains at full speed. and the diminished speed diminished the level of service we were able to provide. after the rest of us went to sleep every night over the course of many, many months, young and his crews went in and worked very efficiently, very cost-effectively to systematically replace those rails to put that part of the system into a good state of repair to raise the speeds. it's painful when you're on those trains coming -- leaving forest hills and you suffer through that agonizing slow down. so, very grateful for young and his crew for that project. and we've also -- the signal

crews which terry here is to represent, led the upgrade of the automatic train control system, the signal loop. a loop of wires that run through the subway that basically provide for the communication of the automated train control system. when our trains are in the subway, they operate on an automatic mode that allows them to move much more quickly and efficiently than they would if they were operating in manual. and when this cable is not functioning, the automatic system goes down. everybody switches into manual mode and the entire service, not just the eureka curve, the entire service degrades. so, it is a very significant project, fairly technical in terms of making sure there was not interference with the communication systems, and that the crews that worked on this also working after hours did a spectacular job. so, i want to thank you both

for the service that you put in to make the train system work better and i'll ask mr. haley if he wants to add a few words. >> director heinicke, [speaker not understood]. i heard you might. [laughter] >> we'll give it to you. >> good afternoon. actually, it's good morning to me because i work graveyard shift. to the chairman and to the board, thank you very much. i'm just up here representing the track maintenance crew which is a crew of 50. and i'm going to have to break this up in pieces and hand it to them. because as a team it's the only way we can function. one of the biggest significant things of this project we were able to do it on revenue hours which is no service disruption to the public. and those are the folks, the people at the city and county of san francisco that pay our wageses so we can go home and support our families. so, we are at a track maintenance department true civil servants of the city of san francisco.

we thank you, board members for doing your job. if you weren't doing your job, we wouldn't have a job. so, thank you very much. (applause) >> i'd also like to thank the board and mr. rifkin and mr. haley for giving me the opportunity to lead young and also the maintenance crew. again, to reiterate what young said, it's the guys, the boots on the ground that really carry this through, that when everyone else is sleeping, they're the ones out fixing the problems and getting the project done. so, i appreciate all of them, all your crew and all of the signal maintenance crew. >> thank you for outstanding work on these two vital projects. director heinicke. >> sure. i will say a special thank you. this has been as you know, terry and young, it's nice to

see you. something of particular interest to me. and i think it would be remiss if i didn't note particular interest to director beach who i suspect is smiling for a brief moment and then will continue yelling at you guys. [laughter] >> so, on that note i will say this is a very tangible and significant thing. the speed and the curve is significant. when you multiply the number of people that go through the curve, by the time lost because of that track wear, you're talking about very significant losses and people capital to the city. and, you know, taking away from people spending time with their families and other important things. so, cheryl bringtionctionv man and i have a chance to walk the tracks with you during the project. you stayed up late, even gave me a ride home which i appreciated. and you know, we saw the hard work from your crew and the people working in nonrevenue hours to do this. and, so, i'll say on the, you know, curve replacement, kudos and thank you for getting it done. on the atcs wire, you know,

when mr. haley first came into this and we kept having these disturbed blocks and disturbed blocks and we actually had a hearing on this, and it came out that it was this wire getting pinched by sander hoses and so forth and so on. i remember, john, i asked you, i said can we wrap this thing in cryptonite? the market for cryptonite is very expensive. but the reality is despite last night's incident which is something else. unfortunate timing but didn't have to do with the atcs wires. those incidents have gone down. you know, customers see the service getting better. they're not quite sure why. the reason is you guys have better protected the atcs service and that's making a big difference. so, i will compliment you on those two things. i'm glad we pushed for them. and i will say when you and i were down in the tunnel late that night, i asked you if we could get the speeds up in the main tunnel, you said yes, but we have to improve the tracks. maybe when we look at it next

time, we can look at rehabing the tracks in the tunnel for further efficient a. cy. t -- efficiency. i say that for people who ride that tunnel and others. (applause) >> thank you. just to make a point of clarification for everyone, just two things. both of these will tremendously add to our safety and reliability of the system, but as far as last night's events and what caused them, it was not the atcs system. >> right. >> you may recall that in our system we operate the two-signal systems. the atcs system which runs the trains and an older legacy system that controls the signals and switches. and what we suffered last night was a electrical short, a failure in this, which is the diode that was in the signal -- the power cabinet that drives the signals and what it

required, terry's folks and the signal crew to do was to identify where the problem was and then remedy it, which took four or five hours because it required walking track from the central relay room at van ness back to the two, in this case, the problem was between [inaudible] sagvan ness. so, the atcs system continues to be more reliable with the completion of this project. and the other thing to mention on the track work thats was done at eureka curve, not only is it a new way for us to deliver projects in terms of using our own work force, but it's a training opportunity to stretch the skills and once again prove that we have some terrific crafts men and workers here. so, i'm sorry to go long, but thank you. >> thank you, john, very much. >> yeah, thank you. i think while we're on the topic, i want to -- we've had a rough couple of days here in

the muni system. i think i just want to kind of do a quick recap on yesterday. i think john explained what would happen. it may have been related to some of the storms we had which were quite unusual saturday night into sunday. it did cause -- we lost the subway from about 6:00 p.m. yesterday evening for the rest of the night. but thanks to the work of the crews all night long, got it up and running in time for morning rush hour. that older legacy system that underlies the atcs is scheduled for replacement. you have already approved the project and the funding for it. so, it's another investment in the upgrade of the system that will lead to improved for reliability. but i get that that's not much solace for people who had a very difficult time getting home last night. * at the same time that that was happening, we had a historic

streetcar on market street around dolores, between dolores and church that struck and very severely injured an individual pedestrian who was in the middle of the roadway which caused additional, additional delays. the day before on sunday morning, we had significant flooding, church and market, van ness and market, and civic center would shut down the subway system for a good part of the morning from maybe 8 or 9 in the morning until about 1 in the afternoon. that was again somewhat extraordinary level of flooding. we've already been talking with public works and public utilities commission to see if there are other preventive things we can do in advance of storms to prevent the rainwater from coming as much into our system as it did. we essentially served as a secondary storm drain to handle some of that water flow. but that caused a significant

disruption on saturday night we had a fatality on 3rd street around mission rock. we're still vehicling that. we don't know to what extent our vehicles were involved, but another, you know, very tragic event, and all that was preceded on thursday morning where we had a vehicle failure around just past the forest hills station, just at the tail end of rush hour which stops subway service for i think about 40 minutes, which again created a whole lot of disruption. so, it's been a bad couple of days. we hope we're coming past it. not a whole lot of relation between those events except for last night's event may have been water related. but i just want to kind of acknowledge that we have problems we've been working on how we communicate in real time to people who are trying to manage the system when it's not

running as normal, better than we have been. better provide real time information. i want to apologize for anybody who is caught up on that's correct particularly the friends and family of the people injured and the gentleman who lost his life. we certainly, without knowing the causes of all these things, it certainly reminds us of how important our system is to san francisco and how when things aren't going well, it can really adversely impact people in a pretty significant way. so, i didn't want to let the meeting go by without acknowledging that. >> so, moving on to brighter things, we recently completed a project at outbound market street -- on outbound market street at valencia, to make left turns work better for cyclists. the way it had worked is that cyclistses would merge across the two lanes of traffic and

across the f-line tracks, both of which cause safety issues for everybody, for both motorists, for f line operators and for cyclists. so, what we've done is put a cut out on the right so the left turning traffic goes to the right, waits for a signal which they now have from signal change to give them a protected green, that allows them to safely cross in absence of traffic and perp dishtion lard to the tracks to make for a much safer environment. we've got new signage and pavement markings to make that clear. as everybody was stuck on the subway, i rode my bike yesterday and rode passed it. it's a significant safety improvement, not bust for cyclists, but for f line operators. it's a very busy area. we have 120 people -- it's about a third of the left turns

off of market street during rush hour, our cyclists. so, they're taking a whole lot of vehicles off the road by being on their bikes. this will enable them to do so safety and connective. we have the greenway signal times for bicycle speed. so, small but significant safety improvement there. moving on to parking, last thursday we met with residents and merchants in the northeast mission area. you may recall, i guess it was earlier this year, we rolled out coined of a large parking management strategy covering a large area including potrero hill and dogpatch and mission bay. we got pretty significant feedback and it was not positive feedback in terms of our plan and process. so, as we saw to you at the time, we kind of stepped back,

we listened to what the community was saying in terms of their desire for more focused process for better data and more time to evaluate. so, last thursday was kind of the first phase of the first of the neighborhoods for that. that one of the impetuses for that project is the fact the parking lot at 17th and folsom which holds 220 cards is going away. it's going to become a city park and housing development. * cars so, the need to develop parking solutions is the most acute here which is why we have this area first up. supervisors com poems and cohen joined the meeting. we got a lot of feedback. most of it constructive. and we'll be working over the next few months. we'll have follow-up meetings, late winter, early spring and hopefully have a proposal for you probably some time in the spring we hope will receiptv a

consensus from the community -- front community to manage needs in that area. hopefully good progress in that front. in the spirit of free muni, a small gesture of -- well, two things. first, as we do every year on new year's eve, we'll be providing free muni service from 8:00 p.m. till 6:00 a.m. to make sure that everybody can get around safely and unimpaired. at least those operating vehicles will be unimpaired and we'll help everybody else get to where they need to go. there is a fire works show at the embarcadaro and mission at midnight. and we want people to be able to travel safely. we're working with the police department and other departments to make sure everybody is safe. and along the lines of free, you'll have on your agenda today, i think it's on that consent agenda, proposal to make muni free on december

28th, which is our 100th anniversary, december 28, 1912 that the ribbon was cut on the then new municipal railway system, one of the first if not the first public transit systems in the country. so, making what our initial thought was to roll back the fare to the original 5 cent fare. it turns out it would be more cumbersome and costly to go to 5 cents than it would be to open the doors and let everybody on for free. so, it's just a small token of thanks to our riders. and maybe to some would be riders. an enticement to come onto muni, a small gesture as part of our centennial celebration. on the day, december 28th, a number of you and a number of management, many will be out -- thank you -- will be out

visiting some of the staff who work out in the various locations as we're thanking our riders. we also want to thank the women and men of muni who work hard and as you heard often, when the rest of us are asleep, to make the system function well. swayer developing a video to show at the divisions that celebrate some of the history. i think we've talked before about the rich photo archive. we have really a lot of history we have to celebrate. and then finally next saturday -- on this saturday, the sfmta will be joining with supervisor wiener, the supervisor for district 8, along with duboce park community for a ribbon cutting celebrating the completion of the church and duboce project. i've given you updates along the way of the various shut downs that were quite disruptive to that point and really to all of our riders on

the west side of town. but we're coming out of this project thanks to the engagement of the community, we have a very good project. people are very pleased with the results from an infrastructure standpoint, much better and smoother, more reliable service. but also from a safety standpoint for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and muni riders a maytionv achievement. 11:00 a.m., church and duboce we'll be celebrating with the community the success of that project. and that concludes my report. >> thank you, director rifkin. i want to say on the 28th i hope as many members of the board will be able to join and go in the various divisions. we see it in a monthly basis for those we honor. where can you see it on a daily basis? i think it's pretty much everybody almost every day. i encourage everyone to go in the celebration. okay, anybody else on this particular item? >> i want to add my personal

thank you for the left turn pocket on valencia. i read it for the first time last night. it's lovely. i've been terrified of streetcar tracks, so, that made such a nice comfort easy way, welcomed as a cyclist and making that term and the fame mr. yee for the bike path, it's a lot of significance for a lot of people. it has gotten the most out p.e. to me from cyclists i see, any which, public meetings. people saying thank you so much for improvements. * outreach i was on oak street and saw a team of of your staff examining down there during rush hour to figure out how to facilitate the bike lanes. dedicated, they were there at 6:30 in the eaglev. thank you. well done. >> members of the board? members of the public have any comments on mr. rifkin's report? >> this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on only 9 topics that mr. rifkin

addressed. we have one member of the public who wishes to speak on one of the item that mr. rifkin discussed. >> anyone else can address the board on the director's report. seeing none, [speaker not understood]. >> all right. mr. chairman, i do not see mr. murphy here, therefore, there is no citizens advisory council report. as you stated earlier, you would like, then, to proceed to item 11 on the regular calendar. >> we will come back to the consent calendar and general public comment after that. okay. >> item 11, authorizing the director to determine the feasibility of central subway project option 4 for the removal of tunnel boring machines. >> garv. >> good afternoon, chairman

nolan, director rifkin, central subway program director. before you is our request to pursue two north beach tvm retrieval options resulting from a meeting held on november 19th facilitated by supervisor david chiu. director rifkin and i met with the members of north beach community and [speaker not understood] the community's concern to minimize surface disruption on columbus avenue between union and powell streets. [speaker not understood] discussionses with north beach community groups including renew sf, washington square park, friends of washington square park, telegraph hill dwellers, joining the development of the final supplemental seisseir, from 2006 to 2008. during the environmental review period, presentationses were made. comments received, and

incorporated into the final environmental document. now, since 2006, the project held 10 community meetings in north beach to inform residents, business owners and organizations of the proposed construction activities. during the project's ten-year planning and development process, other retrieval shaft options along stockton and columbus street right-of-way were evaluate and had presented to the public including the option of removing the tbm from the chinatown station site. the environmental process concluded in 2008 that constructing the retrieval shaft on columbus avenue would cause the least disruption to traffic and public access to locals and businesses. now, that brings us to presentation. four community meeting were held before construction of the north beach retrieval shaft work which started in august of 2012.

the presentations of those four meetings described the work necessary to construct the tbm retrieval shaft on columbus avenue. and some members of the north beach community raised concerns at these meetings about traffic and business disruption caused by the retrieval shaft construction. before you is the plan that's environmentally approved, which shows the retrieval shaft work on columbus avenue. the utility relocation work was completed between august and november of this year. on the half block section of columbus between union and filbert, and only one lane of traffic was closed at a time for this utility work. the construction of the retrieval shaft is scheduled to again 2013, and will be completed in approximately 10 months. the retrieval shaft excavation will require the closure of two lanes on columbus avenue. to minimize effects of construction we have employed a

variety of measures including traffic control and daily street sweeping. the agency decided to move forward with the utility relocation of the proposed columbus street retrieval shaft to meet contractual and grant funding obligations. in the meantime, we've also reviewed four options. some of the residents and business owners in north beach expressed concern that the north beach retrieval shaft work if if carried out as planned would impact the neighborhood without providing benefits of an enhanced public transportation system. the community [speaker not understood] project team to evaluate options and the options evaluated includes included a number of criteria. and including the impediments to a potential but not yet planned future t-line extension. each option was also evaluated based on the impact to the approved project's cost and schedule. as you know, the sfmta has entered into a $233 million

contract to construct the tunnels. the tunnel contract is currently on schedule and on budget and any delays to the tunnel contractor exposed the agency to significant financial risk of a contractor claim. now to walk you through the options as shown on the slide. now, the project staff evaluated several options for the tbm including leaving the tbms in the ground. now, bearing the tbms would require removing some of the tbm's internal components and encapsulating the balance of the machine in concrete to guard it from future settlement as the machineses deteriorate underground. leaving the tbms in the ground would impede the future extension of a subway into north beach. as the encapsulated tbms would likely have to be removed to extend the tunnels or construct an underground station. removing the encapsulated tbms

at a later date is more difficult disruptive and more expensive than removing them at the conclusion of the central subway tunneling as currently planned. option 1, the retrieval shaft is approximately 200 feet from the closest resident and about 70 feet from the closest business. while work is within the public right-of-way, columbus avenue would be reduced to one lane of traffic in each direction in 2013 for approximately 10 months. the retrieval shaft does not impede a future station in north beach nor an extension into fisherman's wharf. and the retrieval shaft could be used for a future construction purpose essentially providing a home if and when a t-line extension from fisherman's wharf is constructed. the retrieval shaft could be used as the home for the future

tbm that would construct the yet to be planned fisherman's wharf extension. now moving on to option 2 which is leaving the tbm head north of the chinatown station based on conversations with the planning department, this would require a minimal additional environmental study, leaving the tbms in the ground in chinatown, north of chinatown, would create a site access issue and jeopardizing the project schedule, leaving the tbm head in the ground would also preclude a reasonable near term project of extending the t-line to north beach. and the option as shown in the diagram reduces the overall project cost by approximately 21 to $23 million because it essentially reduces the project scope by about 2000 feet of tunnel. however, the overall project savings are unknown at this time since the agency would

have to negotiate a modification with the tunneling contractor for the loss of a resale value of the two buried machines. and also would probably delay the station contractors' work as the two contractors would have to coordinator essentially work in the same location. now, option 3 before you is leaving the tbm head under columbus avenue. now, this option would require additional environmental study. also, the tbms would be encapsulated, large obstacles that would be difficult and disruptive to remove at a later date. this option would also complicate a future extension of the line and/or station. and abandoning the tbms in the ground object columbus would require the sfmta to compensate the contractor for the loss of resale value to machines, removing the tbm trailing gear,

and also could cause some potential schedule delays to the existing tunnel contract and station work. option 4 is removing the tunnel blowing machines at 17 31 powell street, commonly known as pagoda palace. this would require additional study. the property is a former cinema, it's currently empty and dee cap itherctiontion, however, the property owner has obtained the approvals from the planning department to redevelop the property at the mixed use retail and residential development condominiums over some ground floor retail. * dee cap it it would require demolishing the existing building. it would impose minimal traffic impacts to columbus avenue. and would not preclude a future extension of lrv service to fisherman's wharf. currently the impact of the project budget would be about